(UK) Great Yarmouth: 'absolutely huge' need for autism center

Nov 23, 2018, Norwich Eastern Daily Press: ‘It is you that has to change’ - the driving force behind Norfolk’s only play centre for children with autism https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/health/sunbeams-play-in-great-yarmouth-is-a-social-centre-for-childre-with-autism-1-5791311 A centre for children and young people with autism is among those to receive a helping hand from the East of England Co-op’s Loneliness Fund. Liz Coates meets its manager Monica Bates to find out about how it all started and what more needs to be done. When she took it on in September 2012, it was all hands to the deck, and hers were pretty much the main ones doing most of the work…. “You could not work here if you weren’t committed and passionate,” she said. “I could not be here if I was not like that. Our phone is ringing all the time.” She soon assembled a board of trustees and started off with just five children. Today the centre costs between £135,000 and £150,000 a year to run, employs 12 staff, and has been rated by Ofsted as outstanding. Sunbeams Play on Gapton Hall Road is believed to be the only centre of its kind in the country. … The need in Great Yarmouth is “absolutely huge”, she says, but the services are not there. … “Where Sunbeams works is because we accept who they are. “Children always say when they come here ‘we can be ourselves, I can be me.’ “They are so used to being excluded they do try and push buttons but they are children and young people first and whatever they bring here we will try and deal with. It is them first, not the autism…. “We had one young man in a panic when he reached 19 because he did not know what to do,” she said. “Time and time again we are finding there is nothing for these young people.”